Claws 9

Tylha

There is the hiss of my breath in the respirator, the dull clunking sound of my boots on the ancient stone. There is no other sound. This world is airless, barren, desolate. And yet -

I look up. The buildings of the arcology tower over me, great looming crags of masonry, curving and overhanging like talons against the black sky. They are so tall - even in the weak gravity of this planet, about a third that of Andoria, they are still at the limits of what's physically possible without antigravs or force-field reinforcement. The only place I've seen bigger building is inside the Dyson Spheres... and, of course, there, since there is effectively no gravity inside the sphere except that provided by local grav generators, the spires can rise to any height.

Inside, and around the bases, of the towers... are catacombs. There is no other way to describe the labyrinth of irregularly-shaped little rooms, linked by narrow meandering corridors. The science and exploration teams have spent hours, already, mapping only a tiny fraction of one of the megastructures... and they have yet to find any rhyme or reason to any of it.

There are no bodies, humanoid or otherwise. We hypothesize, based on the size of the rooms and corridors, that the inhabitants of the arcology were smaller than the average humanoid - but it's just a guess. There are no indications of the functions of the rooms. Odd things are missing - none of the rooms we've mapped seems to have any sort of plumbing connections, for instance. Did these creatures not drink, or wash, or excrete?

And there are no lights - except for the walls.

I stop to stare at one wall. It is covered with a sort of film, a thin but immensely durable coating... and on that coating, glowing symbols move. Each glyph is about the size of my hand, it glows with a soft blue-green light, and it drifts, slowly and randomly, across the surface. Sometimes, when two glyphs collide, they recoil away from each other - or, sometimes, they cross over each other, merging and then separating. There seem to be no rules governing them. I have yet to see two symbols the same, too, though they all share similar characteristics - looping and spiralling lines with feathery strokes around them. Every little room has at least one wall covered in the glyphs - most have several.

There is a slight change in the light; I turn. The space-suited figure before me would be anonymous, except that her faceplate is lit up by the targeting laser over her eye. "Hello, Ronnie," I say.

"Getting anywhere?" Ronnie steps up to the wall, stands facing it with arms akimbo, as if she's challenging it to a fight.

"Nothing yet," I say. "We've run about seventeen thousand of these symbols through King Estmere's linguistics databanks, with no real results. A few positive matches, but it looks like they're just pure coincidence."

"His first important invention was the Crispine alphabet," Ronnie mutters, "consisting of only one character which has not yet been deciphered." I think she's talking to herself, but the proximity comms on the suits let me hear her. "They look blurry, or is that just my eye?"

"The coating is an energized graphene," I say. "We think it draws ambient power from either solar or geothermal sources. And it's a little bit degraded. Graphenes are tough, but this coating has been in place a long time."

"Any idea how long?"

"Take a guess. Mine is... somewhere around a hundred thousand years."

"The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls." I think it's another quotation. Sometimes I wonder if Ronnie is actually human, or a Tamarian with a nose job. "Can't you get anywhere with the universal translators?"

I sigh loudly, loudly enough for her to hear. "Ronnie, do you have any idea how the universal translator actually works?"

"Well, of course not, that's the sort of detail I leave to the highly skilled and much appreciated technical types like you. You know how I work. Push it till it goes, hit it till it breaks."

"Right. There are basic components of linguistic thought - identifiable atomic propositions. I think it was one of your countrymen, Wittgenstein, who first came up with the concept, back on Earth. They're fundamental to the way a conscious mind reacts to the external world, and the patterns they create are identifiable in any kind of consciousness substrate - whether it's an organic brain, or a crystalline one, or even a pattern of pure energy. The universal translator's subquantum detectors pick up those patterns, relate their occurrence to the spoken word - or whatever sort of language production's going on - and generates utterances in our languages that correspond to the same patterns. With me?"

"Ah," says Ronnie. "Not entirely."

"The point is," I say, "there has to be mentation going on. Thought. The language has to be spoken by a conscious being whose brainwaves the UT can pick up. Written language, like here - there's no mind behind it, so we can't translate it that way."

"Um," says Ronnie. "So, the only way we're going to find out what this means... is if we can get someone to read it aloud? Someone who knows the lingo?"

"Unless we can find some match for the script in the linguistics banks, and that's looking less and less likely. Or do our KDF allies know different?"

"Buxton is sure as hell twitchy about something," says Ronnie. "It might just be that she has to walk around with her tail shoved down one leg of her EV suit, but I don't think so. Pretty much a given, though, that they've got something up their sleeves.... Gladys is running around trying to match patterns with whatever she's got stored on her datapads, and I think she's as baffled as we are. Patterns," she adds, in a thoughtful tone. "Sentient beings are awfully good at finding patterns that match. Sometimes, even if they're not actually there - remember the face on Mars?"

"Um. No?"

"Fair enough, then. Anyway." She turns to face me. "If we need someone who speaks alien-drifting-graffiti, there's only one place we might even stand a chance of finding one."

"Tiaza Zephora," I say.

"Right. Right. I'm seriously thinking this place is some kind of dead end. Or red herring. Possibly both."

"We've only explored an infinitesimally small fraction of the megastructure," I say. "All right, it's the part that R'j said might be relevant -"

"But we have no guarantee that Gladys is right," says Ronnie, "even if she's telling the truth. No, kiddo, I think we should leave this place as a fascinating riddle for future archaeologists, and be on our merry way to where the actual action is."

"Maybe." I stare at the enigmatic shifting patterns on the wall. "If this place really has any connection to Tiaza Zephora...."

"Don't see how it can't be connected," Ronnie mutters.

Then my communicator beeps. "Shohl here," I say, touching my wrist.

"Vice Admiral Shohl." A harsh rasping whisper: R'j. "We have discovered something - you should be made aware of it."

"What is it?"

"A body."

"One of the inhabitants of this place?" An alien corpse, now, that would be a start.

"No. I am transmitting coordinates to your transporter room, you should see this for yourself. Vice Admiral Grau should also be informed."

"She's with me now. What is this?"

"It is best if you see for yourselves."

---

The transport is disorienting. Normally, it is the sudden change in scene which confuses people - this time, though, the confusion comes because our destination looks so much the same. Another irregular room, another wall covered with shifting glyphs -

Only this one has more space-suited shapes inside it - all but one of them dark and anonymous in KDF combat gear. The hulking form that has to stoop beneath the low ceiling, that must be a Gorn science officer - Rrueo's body language is instantly recognizable as she prowls across the floor - and the one standing rigid and wary must be R'j.

The only different one... is lying on the floor.

The space suit is an antique design, the body encased in thick silvery material, the head enclosed in a tall, bulbous, box-like structure. A mid-23rd century Starfleet EV suit... personally, I like that design, it gives room for Andorian antennae, but most species found it inconvenient. The body on the floor appears to be human -

"Clearly, this is the corpse of a Federation citizen," R'j's voice rasps in my ear. "We thought you should see - should determine for yourself that there is no element of foul play on our part."

"He has been dead a long time," Rrueo adds.

The front of the EV suit is split open, in a savage diagonal slash that begins at the right hip and goes almost all the way to the left shoulder. There is dark staining that must once have been blood. A wound like that would have to be instantly fatal, even without the suit breach.... Ronnie kneels by the body.

"I do not know," R'j says, "when the Federation sent an expedition to this star system - or why and how it was lost. I presume it must have been lost, since no record of this structure is found in your data banks. I suppose this person's ship can be identified -"

"Yeah," says Ronnie. "His name was Eusebio Luis Moraes, if that helps any. Assigned to the survey ship USS Erebus last time I saw him."

Everyone turns to her. Even Rrueo leaves off her nervous pacing.

"What?" R'j says.

Ronnie stands up slowly. "First met Seb when I was retraining at the Academy in, hmm, must be 2263," she says. "We kind of lost touch, though... well, this would explain why." I hear her take a deep breath. "OK, so we're in an ancient alien ruin, and we run into a dead body here, and it turns out it's someone I used to know. Does anyone else think that's weird?"